Recumbent news on Cycle Vision

Dear recumbent enthousiasts,

it seems that not many british riders want to read the news items on ligfiets.net. However, we try to generate news that could be interesting all over Europe. Especially because within a few days we also have Cycle Vision, the news on the exhibition and races is gathered in
http://www.ligfiets.net/nieuws/bericht.php3?id=2605&taal=en&volledig=1

Hope you enjoy the items, everything is translated into english, so you do not have to be able to read our secret national language.
Greetings,
Jack

Originally posted by Jack Dekker ...everything is translated into english, so you do not have to be able to read our secret national language.

Thanks Jack, I've enjoyed looking at those items. The excitement is mounting - we sail at 10 o'clock tomorrow morning!

i always read ligfiets.. google does a fairly decent translation..

translate.google.com
ligfiets into english is http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A//ligfiets.net/&hl=en&langpair=auto|en&tbb=1&ie=ISO-8859-1


Jack,
 maybe it would be worth sticking the google widget on the front page?

<script src="http://www.gmodules.com/ig/ifr?url=http://www.google.com/ig/modules/translatemypage.xml&up_source_language=nl&w=160&h=60&title=&border=&output=js"></script>

taken from http://translate.google.com/translate_tools?hl=en&sl=nl

Thank you for the excellent weekend, I had a great time.
I meet fards just south of the Humber Bridge as arranged. The supermarket we had arranged to meet at had been taken over and gutted thus we stopped in hull to pick up some supplies, fards went in while I stayed with the bikes to answer the hundreds of questions about them. We successfully boarded the Pride of Rotterdam and put the bikes on the car deck then chatted the evening away in the skylounge bar. It was here we meet 3 other brits from skegness who were also going to CV and were on a Trice Q, HP streetmachine and an upwrong. In the morning we got off the boat and set off towards amsterdam following a route which Fards had planned beforehand and printed off on a series of sheets. We crossed a river on a small ferry for 1:10 euro and headed north. After a few hours, we stumbled across two brits on a Trice X2 tandem, they had found fards's route on the web and were following it their self. We stopped at a bakery and fards bought some very nice dutch cake. At this point we were riding alongside a canal for quite some distance on a nice cyclepath, we saw several school trips on bikes (never seen that in Britain before, most likely due to insurance and health and safety red tape). We only had to use the tomtom once when our route was blocked by roadworks.
We arrived at Sloten campsite at about 4pm and unloaded our luggage and pitched tents before heading back off into the town to have some food and find a shop to stock up on supplies for the weekend. Fards found some beer which you can't get in Britain (something or other Quadruple). When we arrived at the campsite there were about a dozen tents already there but this slowly grew to about 50. On the site was friend wood and mate of his with two of his rather beautiful wooden velomobiles.
At nightfall I got to test out my new lighting system I had recently installed on the Quest including my "down low glow" system which seemed to generate quite some interest (see first picture on news link above).    In the morning was the 1 hour time trial for me, I was in the middle of the field starting at about 9:45am. I managed to better my speed from last year by about 5kph going from about 40 to 45kph for the hour. I then went to look at the trade stands and have a chat with a few people before doing the criterium race. In this race I managed just under 30Mph, about 47Kph which got me 18th. In the evening we went and got some pizzas for tea.
On Sunday morning it was The Big Race. I filled up my new 3 liter unbottle Camelbak and also a 2 liter unbottle with isotonic drink and a backup 2 liter plastic bottle with water. I decided to start with the 3 litre and leave the 2 liter and bottle by the trackside. I had set myself a target average speed of about 22.5mph. Shortly after starting though I realized that I could possibly push a bit harder and after the first hour I realized I had averaged about 25Mph. I decided to attempt to do a metric century (~62 miles) in under 2:30. I meet that target with relative ease after following a group a lowracers for some time. I then decided to go for a sub 4 hour full century (previous PB being about 4:50). After about 3 hours the 3 litre camelbak was dry, after 3 failed attempts at summoning someone to pass me my other drinks I had to stop to pick them up and thus lost the group I was riding with and spent the next half hour or so solo. I got the full century in 3:58 which I was rather pleased with.   I then set myself the target of doing a sub 5-hour double metric (~124 miles). I managed that too with a few mins to spare. It was at this point that my isotonic energy drink supply ran out and my food was low, all I had left was the plain water. I had to make a decision here weather to: ease off or to keep going at my current pace. I knew that at my current pace I was on course for a 40kph/25Mph ave but there was the risk of hitting the wall. I decided to continue at current pace and even managed a sprint of about 28mph in the last 2 laps which were my fastest without hitting the wall.
After the race I had another look around the trade stands and then watched some of the prize giving. In the evening about 75% of the tents had gone leaving just a handful of us to sit around and chat the evening away. On the Monday we rode back to Rotterdam with the north seat route LF1, as we got close we had some extra time thus decided to use the new Benelux tunnel.


Edited by LeeW - 24/June/2008 at 20:00

Hopefully next year I should have a more powerful sound system with more bass and suitable tracks loaded onto the Ipod and that all important cap.

Edited by LeeW - 24/June/2008 at 22:21